Looking to the New Year...
Last year started with promising thoughts on New Year's resolutions, followed by monthly updates... for a while... that dwindled. Which seems to be the nature of things for a lot of people. Looking back on how last year's resolutions worked out, the answer is a resounding so-so. It is astonishing, in retrospect, to realize that with 8,500 hours to play with (nearly 6,000 of them being waking hours), I never got around to listening to 16 hours of Michel Thomas CDs. Still, all was not lost. My Spanish and Italian are much improved. My French is not so shaky as it was. While my Mandarin is still pitiful, it is not so weak as it was. And along the way, I've taken detours into other languages, and language learning methods, and have maintained a love for language that still leaves me heading first for the foreign language aisle whenever I enter a bookstore. That's something, too.
A fundamental problem confronts language learners which is not unlike Douglas Adams' declaration that he liked having written novels. Language learners like having picked up or acquired new languages. They like the thrill of starting new languages, with the rush of learning and the sense of something new. The day-in, day-out slogging through learning when you're past the point where your knowledge doubles every three days but not yet at the point that where you can go chat someone up is harder. It's a time to take stock.
If we had infinite time and resources, we could learn all the languages we wanted. And some of us, at least, would want to learn all of them. But we don't. Choices have to be made. Sometimes, the prudent choice is to say, "time to move on."
* * *
Marc Allen has a new book out, The Greatest Secret of All. The first part, "Discovering the Secret of Manifesting," is pretty stock stuff. It will seem quite familiar to Allen's previous readers, but won't catch readers of The Secret and such too much by surprise. The second part, though, is almost a take-down of the run-of-the-mill self-help book. Allen is too genteel and too relaxed to do anything like that, of course, but he still raises the crucial question that too many self-helpers don't: Why?
Allen's process for manifesting - Dream (the big idea), Imagine (put some flesh on the idea), Believe (conceive of the idea as something you can and will do) and Create (break down the idea into steps and, for God's sake, follow them) is a bit more prudent than what you find with the worst of the self-help literature. You don't just write down your idea fifty times a day and hope for the best. Faith is only of value if it leads to action, and Allen's process is designed to bridge the gap between the wish and the fact.
What makes Allen's latest worth the read, however, is his reminder that there has to be some reason why your goals are worth undertaking, and that this must harmonize with who you are and who you want to be. Scott Adams, a big proponent of manifestation, captured this nicely in a Dilbert cartoon: Dogbert had just learned about the "write down your idea and it will become reality" bit, and decided to try it. He had written "Dilbert is a garden slug" fifteen times. Dilbert doubted it would work, but Dogbert advised that he should still stay away from salt (which causes slugs to shrivel).
Mindless manifestation seems to pop up all over the place, and not just among new age mystics. It's not just that some befuddled new agers dream of lives of ease but lack the emotional depth to do something worthwhile with their time. Academics decimate forest to publish books that no one will ever read. Manufactures hire marketers to convince us to buy crap we don't need. Then builders get us to buy bigger houses to keep it in... And, sad but true, language learners undertake to learn languages that they have no reason to learn.
* * *
Looking back on my successes and failures with language learning last year, one common thread emerges: If I had some external motivation to stick with the language, I did. If not, I didn't. Most of the people in my office speak French; I kept up my French. Some of our teachers pretty much only speak Spanish; I maintained my Spanish in spite of myself. We had a couple Italian teachers around, and a handful of Italian artists are in my regular play list; I stayed with Italian. We have a couple Chinese teachers around and a small Chinese community in the area; while my Chinese is still lousy, it's better. As for Uzbek, I have to stop to remember how to say "my name is..." But when Uzbek music comes up in my play list, I catch all the "my love"s, "my heart"s, "my life"s and "my soul"s that are sprinkled so liberally through their romantic ballads - the language I actually encountered stayed with me. While I'm about to take another look at Turkish (Elisabeth Smith's new "One-Day Turkish"), the truth is I have no purpose for knowing Turkish, and will probably only learn rudiments. German and Arabic are also languages that I really feel like I ought to know, but because they're the kinds of languages polyglots know. But in truth, I'll probably get further with Breton because of my emotional attachment to Bretagne.
So, here is something to consider for the new year and for language resolutions:
1) Try to pick out languages and language goals that will fit in with and improve your life, not conflict with it.
2) If it is your dream to learn a language, imagine, realistically, how the language will be a part of your life, believe in your ability to learn and create and implement realistic, step-by-step plans to do so.
A fundamental problem confronts language learners which is not unlike Douglas Adams' declaration that he liked having written novels. Language learners like having picked up or acquired new languages. They like the thrill of starting new languages, with the rush of learning and the sense of something new. The day-in, day-out slogging through learning when you're past the point where your knowledge doubles every three days but not yet at the point that where you can go chat someone up is harder. It's a time to take stock.
If we had infinite time and resources, we could learn all the languages we wanted. And some of us, at least, would want to learn all of them. But we don't. Choices have to be made. Sometimes, the prudent choice is to say, "time to move on."
* * *
Marc Allen has a new book out, The Greatest Secret of All. The first part, "Discovering the Secret of Manifesting," is pretty stock stuff. It will seem quite familiar to Allen's previous readers, but won't catch readers of The Secret and such too much by surprise. The second part, though, is almost a take-down of the run-of-the-mill self-help book. Allen is too genteel and too relaxed to do anything like that, of course, but he still raises the crucial question that too many self-helpers don't: Why?
Allen's process for manifesting - Dream (the big idea), Imagine (put some flesh on the idea), Believe (conceive of the idea as something you can and will do) and Create (break down the idea into steps and, for God's sake, follow them) is a bit more prudent than what you find with the worst of the self-help literature. You don't just write down your idea fifty times a day and hope for the best. Faith is only of value if it leads to action, and Allen's process is designed to bridge the gap between the wish and the fact.
What makes Allen's latest worth the read, however, is his reminder that there has to be some reason why your goals are worth undertaking, and that this must harmonize with who you are and who you want to be. Scott Adams, a big proponent of manifestation, captured this nicely in a Dilbert cartoon: Dogbert had just learned about the "write down your idea and it will become reality" bit, and decided to try it. He had written "Dilbert is a garden slug" fifteen times. Dilbert doubted it would work, but Dogbert advised that he should still stay away from salt (which causes slugs to shrivel).
Mindless manifestation seems to pop up all over the place, and not just among new age mystics. It's not just that some befuddled new agers dream of lives of ease but lack the emotional depth to do something worthwhile with their time. Academics decimate forest to publish books that no one will ever read. Manufactures hire marketers to convince us to buy crap we don't need. Then builders get us to buy bigger houses to keep it in... And, sad but true, language learners undertake to learn languages that they have no reason to learn.
* * *
Looking back on my successes and failures with language learning last year, one common thread emerges: If I had some external motivation to stick with the language, I did. If not, I didn't. Most of the people in my office speak French; I kept up my French. Some of our teachers pretty much only speak Spanish; I maintained my Spanish in spite of myself. We had a couple Italian teachers around, and a handful of Italian artists are in my regular play list; I stayed with Italian. We have a couple Chinese teachers around and a small Chinese community in the area; while my Chinese is still lousy, it's better. As for Uzbek, I have to stop to remember how to say "my name is..." But when Uzbek music comes up in my play list, I catch all the "my love"s, "my heart"s, "my life"s and "my soul"s that are sprinkled so liberally through their romantic ballads - the language I actually encountered stayed with me. While I'm about to take another look at Turkish (Elisabeth Smith's new "One-Day Turkish"), the truth is I have no purpose for knowing Turkish, and will probably only learn rudiments. German and Arabic are also languages that I really feel like I ought to know, but because they're the kinds of languages polyglots know. But in truth, I'll probably get further with Breton because of my emotional attachment to Bretagne.
So, here is something to consider for the new year and for language resolutions:
1) Try to pick out languages and language goals that will fit in with and improve your life, not conflict with it.
2) If it is your dream to learn a language, imagine, realistically, how the language will be a part of your life, believe in your ability to learn and create and implement realistic, step-by-step plans to do so.
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